A Quote by Meghan Trainor
When I was 13, I told my dad I needed to record myself because I sounded awesome, even though I didn't. By 18, I was a lot better. Then I got a publishing deal, so I was writing songs for other people professionally.
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I got signed to a development deal when I was 15. That fell through after about a year when the company merged with another label. Then I got picked up by Sony publishing. So I was writing professionally from 16 to 18. Then I started making my own records.
From a young age, I was told boxing was not a career option. My dad told me there were other ways to make a living in sport without taking punches to the head. But eventually, curiosity got the better of me. I needed to find out what the big deal was.
When I was 13 I'd record myself on my karaoke machine and if I didn't like it I'd record it again. I'd do that for hours, making sure each line sounded just right.
At 18, I got a publishing deal, so I was like, 'I can do this for real and not go to college.' When I was a teenager, my parents dragged me to a lot of songwriting conventions.
I've done some movies because I would regret them if I didn't, but other projects I've done because they've scared me or if I felt I needed to do a big romantic comedy to help me professionally. Then I'll take a teeny movie when I need to work on myself and become a better actor.
You've got to be a good reader. So whatever genre that you're interested in, read a lot of books about it and it's better than any kind of writing class you'll ever take. You will absorb techniques and then in a lot of cases you can just start writing using the style of the book or the author that you admire and then your own style will emerge out of that. Be a diligent reader and then try to write seriously, professionally and approach everything in writing in a professional way.
I actually produced other people's vocals for a long time when I first signed my publishing deal and I had just sort of decided that I only wanted to be a writer. I would be in all of these writing sessions, and a lot of times my publisher would say, "You should get a demo singer to sing it because then it doesn't identify as a Solange song."
I was 12 or 13 years old. So I started to write poetry and fiction, even though I was really into biology because my dad was a science teacher. I kept writing all those years.
I do not like people writing songs and then other people singing them. A lot of people don't even sing their own songs anymore. It's like producers these days have ghost producers; 'I don't produce, but I am a producer.'
I was able to notice in a very early stage, there were discrepancies between the people who are writing the songs and discrepancies about the self that I was writing about. I was feeling that there were all these different people, both writing the record and having the record being written about them, even though ostensibly it was me sitting down and documenting a series of life experiences. Part of that, when I recognized this unconscious thing I was doing, was about these spaces, about these gaps.
Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.
Wayne's my man. I'm proud of him, he worked hard. You know with a lot of people, Wayne's been doing this for years. Wayne had a record deal before I had a record deal, you know what I'm saying? Even though Cash Money been our for 12, 13 years so you know, for him to come up for where he came up, it was all them, B.G, Juvie, Turk, everybody. To see him excel from all that and become one of the hottest people in the game, 10, 12 years later, I'm really proud of him. That's my lil' man.
It's always interesting to me to see people projecting things, like people would say, "This record is much more mature than your other record" and I would think, "Well, this record has more songs from when I was 18 on it than the other one."
I do work a lot. I mean, most of my income, I would say, comes from live performances. And then you've got publishing, you've got record royalties.
I still only play by ear. I don't have any training. But the piano actually makes more sense to me than guitar, even though I play more guitar now. And then, it wasn't till later that I started really writing songs. Writing songs was an outlet that I needed, so I became obsessed with it. It allowed me to express a bunch of stuff that had been piling up.
It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn't mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don't realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, 'Just let me do what I do.'
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